- Reiver names
- Hermitage Castle
- [Sir Walter Scott]
- Abbotsford
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Sir Walter Scott
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Jean Maxwell-Scott, a descendant of Sir Walter Scott, sitting on a sculpture of Sir Walter's deerhound Maida, which served as a mounting block |
Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh on 15 August 1771. He was descended from many of the notorious reivers, and as a child, he heard many stories about them, as well as songs and legends of the Border. In addition, he developed a love for the Highlanders, a number of his ancestors having fallen at the battle of Culloden in 1746 while fighting for Bonnie Prince Charlie's cause. All this was later reflected in his works.
At the age of 12, he entered Edinburgh University and there learned Italian, Spanish and French. He later studied law and was called to the bar as an advocate in 1792. Five years earlier, at the age of 16, he had been introduced to Robert Burns, the only time these two giants of Scottish letters ever met.
His first literary works were translations from the German. In 1797, he proposed to Williamina Stuart-Belsches but she married someone else. Ostensibly Scott took this hard, but not so hard that he couldn't marry Margaret Charlotte Charpentier, the daughter of a French refugee, later that same year. She eventually became the mother of his two sons and two daughters.
Two years later, on the death of his father, he was appointed to the latter's post of sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire. His work in that 'sheriffdom', in which he was obliged to reside for four months of the year, helped him in his collecting of Border ballads, which he published as the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in three volumes in 1802-3.
In 1804, he moved with his family to Ashiestiel on the River Tweed near Selkirk. The following year, he produced his first great narrative poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, which made him famous and the most popular poet of his day. This success decided him to make literature his profession, but he knew that he did not make enough from this to support his growing family: the publishers Longman had bought the copyright of the Lay for only £500.
The Scottish legal system came to his rescue by appointing him clerk of the Court of Session. Thus he was able to spend half his working life within the law and the other as an author, beginning to write at six every morning and continuing until nine or ten. In 1808, he published his edition of Dryden in 18 volumes, as well as Marmion, a tale of chivalry in verse, which culminates in the Scottish national tragedy of the battle of Flodden in 1513.
In 1810, he produced perhaps his greatest verse work, The Lady of the Lake, this time concentrating on the Highlands. The next year he bought the property that would one day become Abbotsford, in the Border country -- in fact, the last clan battle in Border history, between the Kers and the Scotts, had taken place there in 1526.
With the publication in 1814 of Waverley, Scott began the series of historical novels that is perhaps his greatest contribution to world literature. He published them anonymously: 'I shall not own Waverley. I am not sure it would be considered quite decorous of me, as a clerk of Session, to write novels.' (He relented and revealed his authorship in 1827.) The series continued over the next ten years, eventually including Guy Mannering (1815), Rob Roy and The Heart of Midlothian (both 1818), The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), Ivanhoe (1820) and Kenilworth (1821).
In 1815, he visited the battlefield at Waterloo, and later met Wellington, Blucher and other notables of that event -- he was even publicly kissed on both cheeks by the Russian Cossack commander. His interest in Napoleon was to culminate in a biography of the French emperor (1827).
He was created a baronet in 1820, and also accepted honorary doctorates from both Cambridge and Oxford universities. Two years later, he was instrumental in the success of the visit to Scotland by George IV, the first reigning monarch to go there since Charles I in 1641. On meeting the writer, the king exclaimed: 'Sir Walter Scott, the man in Scotland I most wish to see!' Scott was responsible for the king wearing a kilt of Royal Stuart tartan -- the start of what was to be a complete reinvention of Scottishness that would become a virtual mania during the Victorian period (witness Balmoral).
The year 1826 was a grim one for Scott. First, his publishers (and business associates) Ballantynes declared themselves £130,000 in debt and bankrupt. Scott felt responsible and took it upon himself to see that every penny owed was paid back -- a financial burden that was to haunt him for the rest of his life -- and beyond. (Within two years, he had paid off nearly £40,000; two years after his death, almost £90,000 of the debt had been written off; and over the next 14 years, the rest was paid, all from the income of his writings and the royalties of the biography of Scott written by his son-in-law J G Lockhart.) Then, in May, his wife died after almost 30 years of marriage, which at least had the effect of putting his money problems into perspective.
Despite this, he was greatly feted whenever he came to London, having breakfast with the king, giving sittings to portrait painters and, in 1827, at the Theatrical Fund dinner, allowing himself to be identified as the author of the Waverley novels. In that year, he published his nine-volume Life of Napoleon and the first of his Tales of a Grandfather, a history of Scotland as told to his grandson, which eventually reached four volumes.
In 1831, on the advice of doctors, he went abroad for the first and only time, sailing to Rome, where he visited the memorial to Bonnie Prince Charlie. From there, he went north to the Tyrol, west across Germany, down the Rhine, into Holland and back to England by June 1832. But when he arrived in London, he was ill for three weeks, the newspapers chronicling his medical progress, the royal family making enquiries and prayers being said on his behalf. Eventually he was well enough to return to Abbotsford. However, on 21 September, he died in that house's dining room, looking down on the River Tweed.
